30 March 2015

Only
a couple of months into the Forestry position a handful of professors came to
me and asked if I might want more hours’ work –– which was awesome! Their
department was, in a year and a half’s time hence, to play host to 400 of the
World’s finest agroforesters. An international conference was coming into
town; and for its preparation then, the faculty needed an individual contact
person and coordinator inside the department proper to start to work now, ahead
of time, alongside the University’s overall, general conferencing service which
performed the more universal coordinating endeavors. Again I was thrilled
–– and took to it immediately –– including evenings and some several, late Saturday
afternoons, after first finishing my delicatessen shift. A nicer, more
spiritually elevated group of persons to ever walk the natural World over … I
have yet to meet and know.

I
truly, truly missed my Boys, which of course I believed was to Deviant Herry’s
delight. All of one’s ordinary human emotions and any of those of
DEhumansfor damned sure, so ‘outlandishly irrelevant’ and purposefully alien to this man, I
know that my yearning for my Children … hourly … utterly pleased the
socially pathologic pathologist.

But
I threw myself into this job and into these people and learned again to smile
once in a great, long while. While blue jeans and the loveliest of
simple, gray heather departmental sweatshirts was more than acceptable apparel,
from time to time I actually languished in hosiery and high heels –– just for a
vintage, retro genre of secretarial attiring adventure! I also enjoyed
the other persons of the position –– the college students themselves, that is,
the forestry majors emphasizing in their four – year degree programs either
sustainable agricultural practices or all of the knowledge surrounding human
beings’ use of products made from or involving anything … wooden! I was
the “undergraduate advising secretary,” my official title, so those folks are
whom I was privileged to mostly serve! The undergrads and their forestry
professors. Once in awhile some graduate students as well –– although
another superb individual handled their secretarial matters.

As much as an episode of yearning cut so deeply, a
couple of first –, second – or third – year students would come by my
workstation and need help with the planning of their annually flung Wild Game
and Honors Banquet or with how to fund each one of their summer requirements
consisting of eight weeks’ Forestry Camp up north or out west to administering
the department’s fine arts contest which I continuously oversaw so that
students could win tickets on an event – to – event basis and actually attend
then, free of charge to the student, local performances and concerts! (with
grateful thanks to a very, very generous retired program benefactor and
donating sponsor!) to worrying with them all about their upcoming midterm
examinations. To –– as well –– the
spring semesters’ midterm breaks when two of the undergraduates in
particular spent those entire weeks annually all of the years of their
educations not vacationing anywhere at all but, instead, hard at work in
Ames filling out scholarship and grant applications with my help so as to
secure for themselves their own funding sources for the next upcoming fall terms
since these two women’s parents just didn’t have it for either one of them!

And … as far as my own education –– as far
as about that which Forestry Department Head Joplin had, at the very first, asked me? ––––
Well, with regard to life’s lessons, the ones a willing person learns when
teachable … when she or he isn’t all of the time talking, talking, “teaching”
– talking but is, instead, actually listening to others! … as well as
with regard to my knowledge taken in from all of my formal, higher degrees ––
the ones behind diplomas which I actually earned and never make up lies about
or fuckingly fake on any résumés’ biographical sketches … as does, still,
the Wonderfully – Good – at – Lying Dr. Edinsmaier? I was, indeed, using … my own
education… every day.

I
used it every single day all right … that is, up until one Monday morning ––
the most common day of any week for middle – aged to elderly males to suffer
heart attacks and die –– when my telephone rang around 6:40 am on Havencourt
just as I shuffled out of the shower still not terrifically refreshed for my
upcoming work week. It had been a particularly trying weekend actually,
and I was not quite recovered from it –– yet had a hefty schedule facing me
but, really, nothing more than the usual. In order to live and to
keep current on all of the in – full, on – time child support payments, that usual
then meant weekday daytimes at the Forestry Department, two evenings per week
and both Saturdays and Sundays every single weekend at the 6 am – to – 2 pm
delicatessen grill of the Save – U – More grocery store –– except … for this
very past weekend.

I had finally asked for the 28th and the
29th of March entirely off from the weekend deli work because of a
special errand I wanted to run … one down in Des Moines, which AmTaham had requested of me actually. The Mercy
Hospital’s continuing education complex there staged a two – day
regional conference and workshop on post – polio syndrome, that which had
plagued my father also since his days of poliomyelitis
paralysis and those of when Great – Grandma Tessa Lorraine had managed, struggling
nearly alone with – then – no way to know if what she was doing would actually
work to heal him, to salvage his entire life. She administered the two years’ worth
of function – saving physical therapy to her stricken 19 – year – old child
and, thusly, the then – forced college dropout, AmTaham. AmTaham himself
could not attend the medical center’s event and wondered if I could go –– in
order to learn on his behalf and, then, to report back to him.

I did both. I went and I reported back.
Late that Sunday afternoon of 29 March –– along around 5:00 p.m. or so.
We exchanged a lovely discussion on the telephone, he and I, since the
conference, while exhausting, was quite amazing and soooo, so eye – opening;
and I had had a profusive glut of information to tell him. AmTaham began
the conversation, our last, by thanking me for doing this
for him and then shocking the beYesus out of me with the fact that while I was
driving to Des Moines he’d been insuring his latest Caddy, another Blue not
even a couple of years old yet, a Sedan DeVille, and that if I wanted it when
he was done with it, his having only just purchased and brought it home
to Williamsburg from Iowa City “the day before
yesterday,” why, simply to let him know that!

That
said then! well, the conference and what I now knew from my having participated
in it took up the remaining bulk of our chat. I remember telling him that
I had never seen so much metallic evidence inside one room before –– of human
beings permanently brought low and almost entirely all the way down by a
microbe … as I had seen that specific 1992 Saturday afternoon in Des Moines .
Braces and wheelchairs and crutches and wilted and withered, literally fucked forms
all over that place. AmTaham and a mama named Tessa Lorraine had simply
done wonders back in 1939, back when there were no chemicals to prevent, let
alone, to cure! My daddy, while afflicted somewhat had certainly not been
cursed, life – long, as had so many, many of these other Iowans.

Life
– long? How little I knew.

The person on the telephone early on the very next
morning –– this particular Monday then –– was my older sister, Ardys, calling
me from her home in east central Michigan to say that she herself had just hung
up the phone receiver with our mother, Mehitable. At 6:15 to 6:20 a.m., approximately
25 minutes’ time earlier and apparently … a lifetime’s length of measurement, it
seems Mehitable had dialed 911 because she, alone and reading the day’s Gazette in their Williamsburg living
room at the time, had heard a massive crashing noise coming to her ears from
the main – level bathroom. Ardys said that Mehitable had told her that
our father, AmTaham, appeared to Mehitable to be dead.

“Wha’?
What?! So you’re saying what exactly
here, Ardys?!”

“Well now, I don’t quite know, I guess,” my eldest sibling, at the time then herself 47, had never
been one to get from others facts and details coming at her pinned down …
fast. She would have made, I am thinking now, just a horrid
secretary.

“Is
Daddy dead, Ardys?! ! ! Ardys, what do you know?! ! !”

“Well
now, that’s what it sounds like Mother was trying to tell me, doesn’t it?!”

“How
the !^*#&$@^$#&*&#! should I know! I’m hanging up and calling
Wyman!” Shit! I loathed her dithering, same as I hated
Mehitable’s!

And
I did exactly that, “Wyman. It’s Legion. Say, Wyman, I, ah, um, I
just received the strangest call from Ardys. From Michigan
. She said Mehitable just called her, but between the two of them, they apparently
don’t know if AmTaham’s suffered a heart attack and is or is not dead from
it! It’s 6:45 right now. Can you please
rush over there and check on things, Wyman? Dad and Mom’s line keeps
coming back busy!”

Interminable
it seemed but truly was only 15 minutes or less before Cousin Wyman telephoned
me back. He must’ve flown over to the very west edge of town which, for
him at the time, only meant about a mile by car but through several stop signs
and block intersections in the Burg. His uncle, he told me, was, indeed,
dead. “It’s true, Legion. He’s gone. AmTaham is dead.”

“O, m’god! ! ! O, m’god, O, m’god, O, m’god!
! !” I slumped over and dropped the receiver to my one hearing ear on the brown
table in the Havencourt condominium’s kitchen in the darkness of the early
morning and without its lamps on yet. This news came to me … 44¼ years
old. Same birthday as AmTaham’s –– but the two of us now separated.
Separated forever. And I was … all
alone. All alone. All
alone.

“Yeah.”

It
could’ve been a couple of minutes, a hundred seconds or so. Then I spoke again, still not
weeping, “Aaah, ah, Wyman?”

“Yeah.”

“I,
um, I have to call some people. And, ah, um, … ah, get on the road
then. Actually, no. No. Come to think on it some, Wyman, I bet … I
bet I have to go over to the courthouse in Nevada first and, ah, … ah, talk to
a judge about the Boys. About permission, ya’ know. About the
judge’s letting the Boys come back here from West
Virginia. Or … or not. Ah. Where can I call you back later?” We all didn’t have cell phones then yet so
arrangements were made for me to catch Wyman in a couple of hours’ time at his
home.

Life – long? How long is that? … Just how long
is life – long? From my last hearing
AmTaham, life – long meant less than a full day. Barely more than a half day actually, not
even 14 hours. From Sunday afternoon a
bit after 5 p.m. until 6:45 – 7:00 a.m. the very next morning. And post – polio? It had killed him, I am thinking. The heart, the cardiac muscle … shot, the
result of polio’s viral destruction.

The 30th day of
March 1992, it struck me near to the very bottom of my soul was the day when I was finally … all grown up.
No part of me, nowhere within me,
was little anymore. I was no one’s
little girl anymore. Not in any wee,
small way would I, could I ever, ever be … little again. O, I have to say: not since my bizarro eyeballs’ and mind’s mêlée
with my actually trying to read clear through for myself, also all
alone, daJudge’s decree after Act Two Part Two … forcibly loaded up
–– as soooo against my will the Bitch was commanded to be controlled –– there
at the SpaChezResort’s Sixth Floor Hotel on all of Drugging Daddee – Herry’s manipulating
dope had I been brought straight on down to my knees.

Inless than just five years’ total time,
I had suffered Loss with a capital L –– there had become, now, established for me! ! !my very own Bureau of Loss –– the likes of which most folks, even if it all is spread out over their entire
lifetimes of seven, eight, nine decades in length, will never, never experience.
About Loss? They all ––
comparatively –– know bupkus . The belovéd
clinical and teaching professorship in Kansas, the marriage and spouse, my
three precious children which loss ALONE changed them and me
forever, the career as a veterinary anything, any accumulation or
semblance of home permanency or estate stability and, now, my very own father to death.
From June 1987 to March 1992. The
man with a mind and a manner that I have never known in another –– gone. How unfair.
How so unfair that, now, this
Loss, too, and that I would have to grow all the way the fuck up. Instantly.
Like right, right now. This morning.
This very Monday morning. Here on
Havencourt. And changed me yet again … forever. All alone.

I moved. To the
rocker again. Two pillows, the cushioned
seat on the bottom of the chair and warm, cotton fleece blanketing me
everywhere I could swathe and bandage myself.
Wrapped, rocking, weeping

–– and wracked. Alone.

An hour and a half elapsed.
I realized I wasn’t at my desk at the Forestry Department, so I made the
first telephone call of many more to it there first. “Sure, no problem. Well, we’re so, so sorry, Legion. All right with you to let everyone know? Need anything from us? Yeah, well, okay then. Well, we’ll just see ya’ when you get back. Drive careful now. We’re just so sorry for you. Okay.
Sure, Legion.” Rosalind Franklin, Chair Joplin and the rest of its Posse
wired the Department’s yellow, potted chrysanthemums directly to the
mortuary.

When Wyman and I next talked, he had details. Daddy had dropped. Dead, it sounded to my cousin from his having
spoken with the ambulance driver, “… ‘fore he hit the floor.” Shaving.
Headed to work at the agency: that would have meant full – time at 72 years of age, without
his enjoying any sort of retirement whatsoever, the very same age for dying
and, thus, departing into Righteous Ancestor status as my Other Mother …
Margaret Sagely, at the realty firm where AmTaham worked for someone else
assessing, listing and helping then to sell for folks both farmland acres and residential
homes in town.

What Mehitable had heard was
AmTaham’s smashing, on his final journey all the way down, into the bathroom
shelving and the commode itself with all of their contents collapsing. He’d arisen at the usual 5:30 and gone over
to the black leather La – Z – Boy with which I had gifted him the earliest Winter
Solstice birthday he’d marked after my drawing a paycheck as a first – time labor
and delivery room nurse practitioner. Into
it to read, of course. The Cedar Rapids Gazette. As per their usual daily routine, AmTaham
left both the chair and the newspaper to Mehitable nearly right at 6 a.m. to go
into the lavatory and shave. Time
of death called at somewhere between 6:10 and 6:15 a.m., Monday, 30 March 1992,
then.

My only brother, Sterling , had already departed the Omaha
area for the Burg; his spouse would follow with her two sons when they finished
the school day. That would give Miriam the time to collect things and to
do the family’s packing in order to bring along the stuff of a week’s stay or
longer; this, of course, was not at all, or ever, the task of
Mehitable’s Bereaved Son Sterling’s to do. Ardys and spouse were leaving
from east central Michigan and not expected in to Williamsburg until late that
night. No one knew exactly how to contact Littlest Sibling Endys,
estranged by her own choice from nearly the entire family except not from
AmTaham and –– as everyone knew, as well –– probably because of
Mehitable. Wyman thought he knew of someone who might be able to get in
touch with Endys and, “ … what’ll you do, Legion? Talk is that,
yeah, Mehitable does want all of the
grandchildren, all the seven boys, to be AmTaham’s pallbearers then. So
far, that’s what she’s saying anyhow. She’s kinda shocky though,
too. What do you think you’ll do?”

Of the only man from whom I never needed words repeated
because words were so valuable, like time, to AmTaham, that he, with their very
first transmission out of his larynx, always, always spoke with such elocution,
such sufficient volume and such projection toward anyone and most especially
to me, addressing and articulating in a slow, measured fashion, always
attentively, that I never needed any of his spoken sentences repeated,
–––on AmTaham’s final behalf, now, I
so did not know what to tell Cousin Wyman. Indeed, the Columbus Day
weekend 1991, would have been the last AmTaham set eyes upon his Truemaier
grandchildren –– only that weekend Zane, Jesse, Mirzah and AmTaham never
realized. The Boys were not permitted to come to him nor to Williamsburg
then at all! I couldn’t even recall the last time AmTaham actually had
been with any one, two or all three of them then –– and I still cannot
today. Flummoxed, I told Wyman that I would have to call him yet a third
time –– and from the Storm County Courthouse, that I just did not
know what a pillared man, daJudge, would do to me on this request.

By 10:30 a.m. I –– all
alone, of course –– had Ol’ Black packed up and inside the ugly
surrealism that was this entire exercise behind my exclusive upcoming roadtrip,
I pointed the barely horse – powered vehicle easterly. And went to see a man
about a question. Again, all
alone. If there is any one thing that I have learned in
the last ten – plus years, it is to not place myself into events and
situations at all –– without first procuring the safety that there is at
said event or situation in numbers, even in having just one other person
alongside me holding me in the invisibility of her or his magnetic friendship
field. Today I have the wisdom to absolutely refuse attendance at family
functions, in particular, if I surmise ahead of its time

that I will have at all –– to be –– in the interior
of the physicality of the event’s or situation’s scenario ––

by myself alone. No way do I do that now.
I had always had ‘enough’ friends; but friends in my sphere? My
friends are far too poor … fiscally, that is … to be able, economically,
‘to just take off’ whenever ––

at the drop of a hat or … at
the drop of a friend’s daddy … –– and to go with me out of town for an
unknown or undisclosed length of time. I am not, after all and
thank gawddess, of the English countryside’s aristocracy nor of any other
elitist or intellectual groups. For my friends to leave their families
and homes, their jobs and their lives is a very big deal and, for them to
wisely and safely accomplish, takes weeks and sometimes months of planning
ahead –––– under none of which qualities does the sudden situation of the
unexpected death of a friend’s father qualify.

Herry Edinsmaier, like very many other fathers whom I have
since encountered, was selfishly horrid about spontaneity: he thought it just the greatest in the way of
maneuverability for … himself. Well, one
can think that when one is only
looking out for one’s own self! Of all of
the times when Herry got ants in his pants to up and suddenly go somewhere and
to do something –– which was almost all of the times when he wanted to go do
something afar … that would then involve
an extended stay of more than a day –– why, he was indeed only thinking of
himself.

Only problem was: there
were four others of us and three of them were not adults. Nor was Herry acting anything at all like one
either! No. … On trips with the Boys and
with me to out – of – town locales for any
reason or event whatsoever, why Herry Edinsmaier utterly acted the 17 – year –
old, older Joy Toy Boy brother role … almost solely. Taking three little, little, little Boys on a
roadtrip anywhere was just mahvewous for the four of them –– and sheer, pure
friggin’ hell on me. Always.

But expected I was to not only bound
for the open highway with all of the absolute bliss I could possibly scuttle but
to also enjoy the Huck Finn – fuck out of myself throughout all of the labors,
chores and tasks of it. The work
of it all which Herry – Daddee, androcentrically entitled as he soooo was to
his freedom, to his rest and to his relaxation after all, since he was such the
hard, hard un…slacking – exalted doctor dude over there at such pillars’ medical
center, never willed himself to take on as his own duties –––– let alone, as ‘expectations’ for himself! Elitist Edinsmaier’s only labors, chores,
tasks or, gaaawd – forbid (my calling it) … work –– in order to
sustain or uphold a traveling family of five –– consisted of i) his driving … some of the times and, for certain with every passed pasture full up of either
beef or dairy cattle, ii) his mockingly modeling for three young humans, captured by not only their seatbelts but
also by the alleged father – sons’ ‘bonding’ thingy, with his bushy brownish
mustachioed mimickings of the bulky bulls’ snouts sniffing and snorting after
the several Holstein heifers’ vulvae.
With, … subsequently, … sniggers and sneers all around.

In
my own stupid – ass – heifer and silly mind’s eye with the custodial roles in
The Opera reversed and flipped, I could just imagine Herry
– Daddee in front of daJudge a – jawin’ ‘bout how ‘twas that, with the
relatives rapidly collecting for the upcoming ‘fun’ of a family ‘fun’eral a –
gathering, why, Dr. Edinsmaier just needed “to be skedaddling and a – hittin’
the open road with those best buds of mine, my three boys, and can we just a –
hurry up that there paperwork or whatever it takes to get us all on our way,
Your Honor?” JYeah, that is, if he had been Mirzah’s, Zane’s and Jesse’s noncustodial parent who was ‘court’ – ordered and,
thus, required to obtain daMan’s ‘permission’ to take the mama’s kiddos …
anywhere!

But Herry was not. Dr.
Legion True was. I be that parent.
Fuck, Dr. Herod Edinsmaier would not have even needed to, let
alone, takenthe troubleto do the work of
appearing in daMan’s ‘Court’ –– as the scofflaw which he had, already in
Acts One and Two, quite and so well proved himself to be by his blatantly
outright contemptuous and disdainful refusal in these first two trials’ Production
of Documents’ processes to turn over any or all of the actually existinganswers
about himself splattered all over within those sooo – tangible

hard – copy, handwritten
journals, diaries and scrawls of his! Herry just would not have had to
even come before any judge, man or
woman! Dr. Edinsmaier merely would have called over to whoever was one of
the judge’s underlings and given that specific DEhuman this message of
his: the Good and Wonderful Doctor has a sudden, unplanned and quite urgent
need to get the hell outta Dodge … and, of course, Herry – Daddee’d’ve been off
and gone –– withAll My Children
–– adding nothing more than something like, “Say, I’ll stop in later and take
care of signing off on the paperwork –– or just send it to me. You can do
that, can’tcha’? Yeah, just send it to me.”

But I? Do that,
too? Noooo. Nowhere even close could Dr. Legion True get
away with trying that –– before my getting onto the road to go home to be able
to even start to grieve the death of my adored father.

First things first here! We have to DEhumanize the ex – Cunt yet once
again. And even more so around the deal of this specific dead man … than we
already have before this, her daddy’s dying day. Had I not stopped to literally beg before daJudge
assigned to me at the courthouse first, 11:15 to 11:45 am, Monday, 30 March
1992, still the very same first morning that I was trying to
process the incredulity which was befalling upon me and mine that day, my three
Truemaier Boys would not have arrived back in the Burg for their belovéd Grandpa
AmTaham’s funeral at all. And ‘that
development’ in The Opera would have been just mighty fine with Herry –– if Zane,
Mirzah and Jesse all had missed it –– considering how Herry himself had always
felt about his ex – father – in – law.
“You promise to not drive them anywhere?” “You promise to see them only at the
residence of your mother’s and at the places of the service proper and nowhere
else; that includes only to the cemetery, graveside, is that correct?” “They are not to be in your direct care, is
that understood?” Never out of this
judge, who of course was the High Aggrandizier himself, Sol Wacotler Seizor,
never, not one word of this mere man’s
lexis on this miserable matter included any sentiment sounding whatsoever at
all like, “ … Aaah, gee, Ma’am, we’re all here so sorry for the Loss of your
father today.” No. Uh – uh.
O No!

And I? I did not shed one mother – fucking tear in
front of this dastardly heartless DEhuman – fucker either. Not one!
I saved them all for who really mattered, walked out of that world’s
wicked aura, aimed Ol’ Black east yet one more time again, out onto the federal
Lincoln Highway … US #30 … and left behind me and suspended for the time being
Herod Edinsmaier’s holocaustic hatred of things Legion – like. Again alone.

Not until 2:30 p.m. did I arrive. On, now, the
saddest day of my whole life –– for a trek by automobile that ordinarily should
have been completed to Williamsburg by any ‘normal’ father (such as, for
example, … Mehitable’s only – born human, Sterling) by, O say from initial
packing on Havencourt in The Teacup to pulling in to the driveway there at her
and AmTaham’s house in the Burg, 10 a.m. –– Straightaway in line with controlling
androcentrism and the epitomic essence of patriarchy’s power, I owed half of my
most grief – stricken day to Herry and to his folie follies with judges and the
Next Stupid – Ass Heifer in his Stash. At this
specific day’s start, I had to suffer and to receive unto myself the
execution of Horrid King Herod’s aprovechar
practice in ‘the Court’ again of its first royally screwing me, the mother of
three of AmTaham’s most favored folks on the entire Planet. And it was Herry’s final assault on AmTaham,
too, to besmirch his memory with this exploit against another of AmTaham’s
favorites, the one with whom the, now,
Righteous Ancestor annually shared his Winter Solstice renewal and all the rest
of his Truth, wisdom and nature: me.

After this recurring
belittling courtroom beating and mother – mugging, little did I know that I
apparently owed someone else besides Herry his opportunity, too, to wreck
violence, to rain, as well as, to reign down upon me, the DEhuman, the masses’
hellfire and to mouth – whip me bloody with his verbal vengeance and terrorism. Only – Brother Sterling’s additional bombastic
tyranny is, indeed, why my ‘safety in
numbers’ deal, a protection never taught to her three daughters by Mother
Mehitable and for which Dr. Legion True always,
always, always calculates and accords my precious self before leaving my
home –– now! I parked Ol’ Black in the driveway, walked up
the outer concrete steps, about ten of them on the rocky northern edge of the bi
– level, caramel brick ranch with chocolate brown trim, to the doorway of my
parents’ home and, after repeatedly knocking without any response whatsoever,
escorted myself into its tiny foyer which nearly immediately opens off to its right
side into the very bathroom that had been AmTaham’s death chamber. As time would prove true, I accomplished this
fairly simple physical exercise into AmTaham’s and Mehitable’s west – edge home
over the course of that day and the next six –– for the very last times.

To its left or the easterly direction of this short entry
space, a visitor turned directly into the True kitchen,

a well – lit, modest one designed like a boxcar with
blackish linoleum splashed by light speckles of white and pink within it –– over
which my firstborn Truemaier, as an infant, used to crawl to a water bowl that Gran
Mehitable placed down upon it for Zane to actually lap there from it like a little
kitty cat drinks. Things on one side and
about an equal number of things on the other side, lots of cupboards both up
and down and all of them crammed chockfull of pans and pots and other stuffs
and lots and lots of countertop workspace, a kitchen with all of the necessary,
and quite a few unnecessary, appliances.
Round, clothed table, very small with really only enough room at it for
two people, place settings and food items at the very far east end that,
itself, either bifurcated into AmTaham’s home realty office or, at right angles
to his office, a permanently opened archway that led into a spacious and very
comfortable living room. A kitchen and
living room, both, in which breakable bric – a – brac, all manner of
knickknacks and other cheap, cheap gimcracks spewed and splat themselves all
over in between the things, and low – down on curio corners and shelves too, crappy
ornaments which were neverremoved when my Truemaier Babies came to visit.

“He has to learn what I mean when I say ‘NO!’,” her boomed “homeland
law” spat back at me –– as Mehitable would simultaneously slap the dorsal
aspects of any of my Boys’ tiny hands since she claimed to know such ‘truths’
from ancient, (and, obviously, far less
than … righteous – ) ancestral … “parenting” … times. Verisimilar in violent style Mehitable’s was
to that of Fatlantic’s Grand Lay Priest’s, the Great Juggern Aut Misein
Edinsmaier’s, filthy, lewd and loutish baling wire – whippings about the very same
aspects of the bilateral calves of older children’s lower limbs –– those kiddos
seemingly not quickly enough coming into compliance with that specific man’s “parenting and homeland laws.”

Unwanted intruder who I always believed myself to be before
this date … when, upon my arrival, it’d been only my mother at her house there
… I swiveled around from the bathroom doorway and its early – morning figment of
my falling father imaged on my brain to join the voices I already heard coming
from deep within that kitchen. Except
that, myself entirely wordless as of yet and from the carpeted
foyer inwardly, I took only two wee steps forward on that blackish flooring
before –– as had been Legion True’s very same patriarchal dealing with
Professor and hardly quakerly or eldering
P.M. Flunk’s fist – on – the – DEhuman’s – maternal – breastbone mother – fuck,
I was summarily halted.

An instantaneous screaming at
the top of his lungs occurred not more than an inch and a half from my hearing
ear, perhaps two to three inches altogether –– but no further –– from that working right eardrum of mine. As Dear, Dear Daddy just, indeed, had done! I
myself –– truly and literally –– nearly fell down to the
floor from the force behind daMan’s hardly (as
well) brothering blast, “YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!! YOU.
KILLED. MY. FATHER! ! !”

This –– from out an orifice situated on Sterling’s lower
face which was ajar a distance that I, long – time a medical worker, had never
known possible for the temporomandibular joint of a human being. A python ingesting its constricted, crushed
and asphyxiated antelope or gazelle whole, yes, but not a width which a human’s
jaws could uncover, no.

Immediately flanked in this feat
at Brother’s right shoulder and, remarkably, at the very same swiftness that it
required for Sterling to reach me splayed The Widow Mehitable in all of her cyanotic
cyclonic wrath as well. Both of these
two robots raging in symphonic – conducting stance together, he with his right
and she with her right also, took to jabbing their respective index fingers
into the air, repeatedly stabbing them downward into and mere millimeters away from
connecting with my sternum and breasts.
While the spread mouth on Sterling underwent no break from its
massacring work, no sounds emitted from Mehitable’s; but the entire bulwark
that was her cranium, face, neck and chest, that is her whole head and upper
trunk, gyrated up and down like a black Angus bull’s massive front side does
inside a Spanish fighting arena and bore on its facial anterior the same
expression as one can imagine embellishes said bull’s. Her mouth was indeed silent next to Most –
Favored Son Sterling’s which was obviously moving for hers also, Mehitable’s own
lips rigid and pursed, the cartilaginous cords strained and popping out from
her neck. The only elaboration missing
were the two streams of hottest steam cartooning and jettisoning from out of
both of The Widow’s nostrils, but each naris snorted again and again in
rhythmic synchrony with the two flying right fists and index fingers, and itty
bitty flecks and strings of mucousy snot flit out onto the flesh above her
upper lip.

I saw plenty of spit and mucus
and phlegm, but the body fluid that is tears’ secretions –– that I saw none of emitting from these madness machines’ four total bulbar
cavities. I, on the other hand, was
utterly reduced to nothing but. Weeping from
out my own sockets like, like … aaaah, like … I’d just lost my dad or something.

No one else. Not one
other person was in this house yet. Just
the three of us there along around 2:45 or so –– while Sterling continued the dastardly
duet that was my brother’s and my
mother’s. Straight out –– classic
… this scenario –– of the data findings and results’ pages of Mothers
on Trial researcher and author, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, regarding noncustodial
mamas facing down –– in my case, all alone –– the violent and
violating vitriol exactingly flung at them from their very own families, “It’s
cuz of you that he’s dead! You killed
him! You and all your goddamn
problems! You killed him sure’s if you’d shot him dead yourself! It’s cuz of all the goddamn, friggin’
problems you brought to him! You did this. You killed my father.”

“He was my father,
too.”

“Yeah? Yeah?!!! Well,
fuck you! You killed
him! It’s all cuz of you. It’s
all your fault!” And Sterling
repeated for both himself and Mehitable their mantra as if I had had no daddy
ever, “You killed my father!”

It was of no wonder at all to me that with her only family friend and ally dead, Sister
Endys appeared at AmTaham’s funeral and graveside only and –– never –– over at The Widow’s house. I tore away from the blustering clutches of
these two automaton contraptions and started to wince my way with the couple of
travel bags down a carpeted hall intending to route myself into the furthest,
southwest one of the main level’s three bedrooms when Mehitable whose house
alone the entire structure now was, of course, shouted, “Where do you think you’re going?!”

“You thought what,
Young Lady? Just what did you think?”
still not crying –– no tears from this person.

And the designation with which Mehitable had referred to me
as, well, all of us “young ladies” know exactly what that means at any time someone uses it as an address, let alone, … when
one’s own mother does. “Sterling’s
right. Your brother’s absolutely right,
ya’ know! AmTaham’s dead because of you
and Endys. Because of all of the
problems you two caused all of us; that’s
what’s killed him! I don’t know how you
can live with yourself now, Young Lady!
Go on! Go on! Get outta my sight!” Just shouting and screaming. And … from AmTaham’s Widow Herself … still … no tears.

With the brushing and the battering
of both of her upper extremities at the windless air in the dark hallway of her
‘home’, a building I had never known the inside of until I was 24 or 25 years
old, Herry’s Other Shrew dissed, pooh – poohed and shooed away no one other
than her second daughter – child whose first name –– Legion –– literally as in the same shaming shunning
manner of The Soooo Good and Wonderful, (albeit) Her ex
– Son – in – Law Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s, had yet to be spoken by my own mama. Escaping to that precise bedroom, I closed
the door quietly, locked it, submersed myself into the mattress on the far side
of its double bed there and faced the juncture of the west and south walls
where both walls’ windows were big slits stationed up near the ceiling, my only
view then the room’s ivory paint –– and not the Burg’s town park to the
west. The one with the little kiddos’
play equipment including a jungle gym with three, attached and graduated monkey
bars, three rocking horses, an orange – handled water hydrant next to the
bright whitely painted picnic shelter –– and The Pond barely but just large
enough for practicing canoeing skills and in which Zane Truemaier had once
plied his fishing hobby, the one on which Rosemarie’s belovéd Bill had begun
him at my firstborn’s wee and tender age of four years back at Hershey P A’s
BullFrog Valley Pond. The playthings in
threes which all of them, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had at one time or another
simultaneously occupied. To their (Now –
Newly Made) Ancestor AmTaham’s absolute delight.

After the Truemaier Boys had … each
one … learned to walk, it was that body of water … in particular … which was the
principal reason, however, behind why I never –– ever
–– allowed my three Sons to spend time at the Grandparent Trues –– without
me there as well. AmTaham
was so deaf and Mehitable quite blind and so blindly unrealistic and old, old
school in her expectations out of little
children that I never trusted her with the Boys –– and That Pond. Ever. AmTaham wasn’t home, what with his business
and all; and even if he had been, my father couldn’t have heard screams for
help, not to mention, small chatter coming from little ones who had wandered farther
away from the home – based premises than was … safe.

And Mehitable? I could just never trust that she would actually
see them, let alone, see that two – , three – and four – year – olds, that … truly … children all the way up through
12 and older require direct and
visual supervision … around water. We
had all been farmers in our younger years, the sort of lifestyle in Iowa that,
without the incredibly rare built – in swimming pool or even an above – ground
one in rural folks’ own backyards, just does not lend itself –– for those regular,
twice – weekly sessions –– to transporting the country kids 15 to 20 miles one
way into a neighboring town with the nearest public pool. With farming and all of its chores, swimming
lessons would have meant AmTaham doing all of the chauffeuring of us four Trues
or his hiring someone else to take and mind us all there … since Mehitable was
with her eyes of course, unable to drive anybody anywhere at any time! Neither AmTaham nor Mehitable swam themselves
about which I ever knew; and since my siblings and I had never been sent for lessons
either, I for one knew, having myself while recreationally swimming as a
preteen with my friends been rescued by
lifeguards out of pools three times in my former life, I knew that I could not swim to save myself! let alone, a child of mine!

And Daddee – Herry? The father who wouldn’t, upon any nightfalls,
even lock up one door anywhere, not
to mention the actual various homelands’ entrances, … to try to protect my
sleeping children? The father who cannot
even spell Zane’s name correctly one time
in his own Section D, the ‘SAFETY AND WELLBEING,’ that ‘safeguarding’ section in
Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s very first affidavit to ‘the Court’, to daJudge (Chapter
26, Jury!) … that father? daMan who
wouldn’t even accompany me to the True residence to visit AmTaham or Mehitable
– ever? That father?
Fuck, Daddee – Herry was in no way – ever – going to
beaccountable for Zane
Truemaier, Jesse Truemaier or Mirzah Truemaier … around The Pond. This little I so, too, did know!

I pulled both of the unfluffably
foam – filled bed pillows out from under whatever quilt of the (literal) scores
this woman owned and had squirreled away in this and all other of the different
bedrooms’ blonde built – in cabinets and closets and chests –– and began to cry
into them. I cried and cried and cried
and cried.

My father’s only brother, Wilbert, a couple of years younger
in age than Daddy who had himself been the eldest of six children, and
Marguerite, that man’s latest live – in since Wilbert’s divorce of long – standing
and longer marriage which had itself produced now – adult children and three of
my first cousins, arrived from Cedar Rapids, the first persons finally around
–– to be able to deflect away from me the despicably violent and violating attentions
of Mehitable and Sterling. Others of my
father’s siblings, all women, began arriving then, too, eventually all three of
the breathing ones, there having originally been four of them. All four of these DEhumans Mehitable detested
–– quite in line with my mother’s obvious jealousy of anything female within
her sphere … other than herself. Mehitable
True, it seemed to me as a wee child and now a person approaching adulthood’s middle
age, had always been adamant and right out loud in her dissing on each one of her
husband’s sisters, my paternal aunts.
With only one of the three living ones, the fourth – born of Ava
Saffron’s string of a half a dozen kiddos, had Mehitable any interaction at her
True house then during Daddy’s days – o’ – death event –– or, come to think on
it … since, for that matter. That aunt
with her spouse still resided only 15 miles from Mehitable and AmTaham,
actually right on Daddy’s homestead place, the 80 acres which the Truemaier
Boys’ Great – Grandpa Zebulon and Great – Grandma Ava Saffron had farmed and
from where Ancestor Daddy had first courted Mehitable who, at the time, lived
with her corn – growing parents in another rural township approximately 10
miles to the same county’s southeast –––– all of this activity … before
AmTaham’s deployment to the Himalayas and Wilbert’s to France in the two prime killing
scenarios which were World War II’s “theaters” for brothers.

Great – Grandpa Zebulon, a pipe tobacco – smoker, a Prince
Albert – in – a – Can kind of guy after trying unsuccessfully to entirely quit
with the Lucky Strikes and the Camels and who drank only a very small amount of
medicinal whiskey and no beer although most German and never that I, someone
whom he affectionately called Li’l which sounded like Lil but is a diminutive
of Little, saw, had died there at the age of only 67. And while tiny – boned and snow – white Great
– Grandma Ava Saffron had herself lived in town for nearly a quarter century
inside first a mint green and then a freshly blue – painted wooden cottage on Williamsburg’s
south side since Zebulon’s lumberyard accident had eventually made her a very,
very comely widow under her wildly wide black brims, she was also now deceased,
too –– gone some seven years at her age then of 88 … from a fast – growing
lymphatic cancer. AmTaham’s other two
sisters lived separate lives, each singly, both in a small Cedar Rapids suburb
less than another 20 or so miles from their middle sister. One of those two was also a long – , long –
time widow and pensioner whose only child in his mid 20s had been killed one
night during an illegal drag race on a country gravel road. The youngest True sister spent her lifetime
as a secretary, quite a pianist and singer and as several elder folks’
caregiver. To these two paternal aunts I
still send birthday cards. I keep in
touch one or two other times a year as well and actually rendezvous at their haunts
over in eastern Iowa for a face – to – face chat every now and then.

When I eventually emerged from
that back refuge about an hour and a half later, quite a number of the
relatives and others were all congregating inside the gracious and spacious
living room, one both for sitting as well as for dining at a lovely blonde
ensemble located off at the far east end of it.
Mehitable was at her prime … working that room. Working … working, working it. And … all of the would – be mourners now
present. This is a woman who not only
has made “Poor Me, Poor Me, O Ya’ Need to Pity Poor, Poor Me” an arts performance but also … her life’s work. And has, in addition, tried in every which
tired, old way she knows of to make it and my two sisters’ … ours, too. Hence, the ‘be soft, be servile, be deferent’
invectives to only us females and her “You lost a marriage to a doctor? A doctor?!
Why, you stupid idiot!” sorts of taunting teachings and scorning –
screed censures. It was, now, around 4
in the p.m. when I was first witnessing the tears flowing from her lacrimal
canals and were they ever. Boxes containing
Kleenex two of the women kept shoving into Mehitable’s reach and all DEhumans present
could be collectively heard from time to time with their ubiquitous, “There,
there. There, there now” or the ever
popular and truly selfish question too, too many females implore from each
other that is actually a strategized, maneuvered and the desired response to
Mehitable’s poor, poor me – posturing … “O Mehitable, whatever will you do
now?”

Selfish? Yes, selfish, in that … what about AmTaham and what about those of us others who truly had relied
and depended upon him, his wisdom and his Truths daily. ‘Cause, hell, Mehitable’d be just fine. Mighty fine, in fact. She would just keep on doing nowexactly what she’d always been doing, AmTaham alive or dead! Nothing about this day would
introduce change into Mehitable’s functioning in the least. Only mine would AmTaham now LOST
to me … change. This person Mehitable
would continue to control everything –– either out in front with AmTaham’s
physical form gone missing now or still hooded and concealed just as she had always
done or tried to get done before. From
out behind the dashboard lights!

The driving engine that was Mehitable’s force was to be
envied by the staunchest of radical feminists –– except for one thing: Mehitable was precisely and of relentless,
purposeful deliberation … noooo feminist, of course. Hers was a dark force, one of the genre of Mother Theresa and her ilk and
never at all one of, “Fuck, you can go this alone. You don’t need
a man. And, what’s more, you never did.”

AmTaham’s wisdom and his Truths, the stuff of which was now
most literally Ancestral … instead, still, of the natures existing “… – in – Training,” were hair – trigger,
that is instantaneously available and at all times now … accessible to me. I mean I didn’t have to wait any longer, wait
to find AmTaham at home or for him to arrive at my house or to come to the
telephone or to the end of some other lifeline.
I could just call upon him, rely upon him, depend upon his Truths and
his wisdom just any ol’ time I bloody well needed him and them. That is, this –– His Dying, was the
very essence of His Things Ancestral.
For me. Of this amazement, of course, I did not yet
fully comprehend on that Monday of 30 March 1992; but even now and even so, I
would soooo give up in the blink of the span of time that was that last
heartbeat of his … I would give up anything over which I have control just to
have him back breathing again. Instead
of, now, “ … always, always accessible” to me and to the Boys.

On my person I possessed a piece of pocketed paper signed by
Storm County’s High Aggrandizier himself allowing that the three Truemaiers, if
the Boys themselves wanted to, could attend their
grandfather’s funeral and, likewise, attend to the duties of it assigned therein
to any one of them. Or, some such
wording.

Me, the 44 – year – old, now – suddenly
– and – finally – all – grown – up – daughter … of a man just dead.

And, in the United States of America
in the year of 1992, the biological –– and loving –– mother of three, minor
children.

A note that “excused” me!

And, a few hours earlier, stated
that Mirzah, Jesse and Zane could become three of
AmTaham’s pallbearers if Mehitable or Sterling or
whoever, certainly not moi, had wanted this to be the case in
their, and just as certainly not my, planning of the memorializing ceremonies. I am thinking on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Our
Androcentric Culture published in 1911, almost a decade before the birth even
of Mehitable Natures, and transposing to the legal system and the American way
of supposed “freedoms” and “justice,” Authoress Gilman’s quotation there on … religions. “All the religions are made by men and forced
on women whether they like it or not, women –– denied souls –– given a much
lower place in religion going from the service of their fathers’ gods to the
service of their husbands’, having none of their own. We see religions make no place for women,
rigidly bigoted, unchanging as any other.
That women are the bulwark of our religions is due to the acts of two
classes of men: the men of the world who keep women in their restricted
position and the men of the church who take every advantage of the limits of
women.”

Gone from the dead man’s over to
the service of her husband’s Legion True is … even though … technically ... he
be the ex – husband. And gone there onlyby way of daJudges, also almost all
exclusively the humans … first. She, of course the DEhuman, requires, has
need of and should desire for herself no justice and no freedoms of her
own.

She does need to take a note of
excusal with her, however.

When she goes over to do the
legal servicing and the bidding of him who can have her, her services and her
labors –– as well as, of course, have utterly away from her ––
because of sperm exaltation –– her very own babies which mission she
alone chose for herself the deadly risk (that pregnancy and birthing is) to grow into the human beings who they
themselves actually have become … she needs to take a note. Sordid.
Macabre.

FLIP / REVERSE: A
permitting piece of judicial fuck the likes of which paper I know of no adult man
willing … to first procure and then
to carry upon his person. And, finally,
to produce to his approving and consenting mama or, say, … show his sanctioning
sister! Not to mention via a third party,
for example, to demonstrate as documentation to the ex – wife! when she, from a
long and far distance, demands to verifiably know of the daddee’s ‘legal’ proof
of his ‘temporary’ authorization?! You,
Jury?! You know of such a human, do any
of You?!

I had to ask all of
my Sons, long into their adulthoods, just how it was that they’d initially received
the clobbering finality of AmTaham’s dying because Herry and Ms. Fannie
Issicran McLive, of course, never told me.
And Sterling and Mehitable haven’t –– if they ever did know.

It’s a given that I was so not allowed to
speak to Zane, Mirzah or Jesse if I had called out to Grubtrop; and although I
do not remember if I did or if I did not, I can only imagine that I no doubt
tried to do this telephoning. Any mother
would have is what I am thinking. Any of
us Mothers on Trial would have attempted to get this saddest of news to her
children so I am fairly sure that I, too, … tried to tell them.

Only from Zane do I know about the immediacy of the Boys’
receipt of the sobering knowledge that their Grandpa AmTaham had in the pentametre
of the man’s Favorite Poet Tennyson “crossed the bar” over into Ancestor
status. And Zane only knew about his own
case alone and nothing regarding what had transpired as far as his brothers’ first
acquisition of the sorrowful information.
Same Edinsmaier – shunning deal as when Zane had, in Kate Mitchell Elementary’s
fifth grade of Mr. Green’s, filmed his Grandpa AmTaham True for that specific History
Day project four years earlier:
Protecting and Guarding and Mentoring and Role – Modeling Herry – Daddee
was nowhere around on the scene when Zane stepped off the Grubtrop, West
Virginia community’s schoolbus that Monday afternoon, 30 March 1992, in front
of Herry’s two – story, white wood – frame rental. The Good and Wonderful Doctor was probably at
work … doctoring … ya’ know, Jury, … aaah, “healing.” If so and nevertheless … Dr.
Herod Edinsmaier was physically at a place, was at a workplace, from where he
could have quite easily then left!
Literally! Child – protecting and
– guarding and – “loving” Daddee – Herry could have … should have … … if
loving ... gotten himself immediately, right there at the laboratory’s lot, into
any one of the great number of his gazillion vehicles and purposefully driven
off bound for the Truemaier Boys’ vicinity –– just in order to come to the sides
of all of these children at the very moments they each were to receive into
their brains this devastating news.

Which Healer Edinsmaier did not do for Zane. And likely not as well for Jesse and Mirzah. Fuck, not only that … Dr. Herod Edinsmaier
didn’t even (care to) know –– in the
vernacular of his Next Cuntly Spouse, in the blistering argot of blithering Ms.
Fannie Issicran McLive, Dr. Edinsmaier “had no idea” … then or, likely … ever
on any given day and time! … the virtual, the possible, let alone, the actual! vicinities
of
any of my Truemaier Boys!

Ms. Fannie McLive told Zane right there on the front
yard.

Zane, alone, without even one of his two brothers present, a
freshman in high school, just 15 years old and a boy who had just lost one of
the closest and truest friends he would ever know and have as devoted and loyal
ally throughout his entire lifetime.

The incomprehensibility of some
people’s actions does not boggle me anymore.
It used to. It doesn’t do that
anymore. At all. I can see Soooo Not – Gonna! – Step
– Back – “Step”“Mother” McLive’s doing this deathly deed all by herself. Right there on the grass and sidewalk. Without any True on the telephone wire, at the
least. Or one Truemaier brother present for
each other’s steadying and silencing calm … as well. Or even just “First – Father” Edinsmaier at
all ‘around’ for (possibly!) earliest
comforting. I can visualize this actual scenario occurring. It –– as it was, of course, so determinedly and
utterly meant to –– disgusts. Still.

Same shaming shun, as well, as
to how the three Truemaier Boys, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had each
one received the cheerless and injurious news of their parents’
pending divorce: captured, confined and
shut up as prisoners inside their seatbelts at interstate speeds and without
benefit of the presence of their mother or any grandparent. Just detained hostages of Herry’s –– alone.
Very, very alone. A life lesson Herry – The – Walt Disney
continued to teach, teach, all the time teach to each of my Boys on the day of
the death of his ex – father – in – law, AmTaham True, “Receive and take all of
this on and inside yourselves, –– alone.
Certainly don’t let a woman who might’ve been important to you at one
time know or see you cry. She’s only a
female; and, if you grieve, you’re nothin’ but a weakling! After all, she’s invisible to you kids
anyhow.” Yes, by both the Good and
Wonderful Healer Herry and his Next Cunt my Boys’ mother, too, was resolutely …
was vengefully
… made to be nowhere around when any one of the three Truemaier Children first heard of their Grandpa AmTaham’s
dying that day! My Sons that day –– as
on all others –– had no mother.
And I, suddenly made fatherless, too had no Sons … to give mecomfort … either! The very same shaming Edinsmaier – shun. “Years ago, still small, I lost my mother.” “
… a flood of tears must fall.”

Tuesday three – fourths of the
immediate siblings which, by then, included Ardys with her spouse from Bay
City, Michigan, Sterling with his who’d joined The Only and Most Excellent Son
– Brother from their Omaha – area home, and Dr. Legion True, alone and with No Other to comfort her, all
motored, some of us inside AmTaham’s brand – newest, two – day – old, promised
– to – be – gifted – to – Legion – when – Grandpa – was – “done with it” – Caddy
Blue The Widow Mehitable over to a town just a bit more than an hour away from
the Burg. A nice little village by
where, I’d long ago been told in my youth, farmed “a lot of Amish” although, I
wondered now, what is a lot of them?
Does any one, two, three or so of humans and “their” DEhumans,
particularly those quirkily different from ourselves, constitute “a lot of
Amish” then? The “them – and – not – us”
mentality outright, and out straight as well from Mehitable, from her thinkings
and sayings. As I knew she would most
certainly do, Endys for whom Cousin Wyman had found contacts chose to forego all encounters with those of us others
in The Family prior to the very
ritual in AmTaham’s church of his childhood –– the building that at one time
had housed within its interior AmTaham True’s one – room school. That elementary institution wherein which one
specific herr reverend – schoolmaster of the early 1930s had not been so
reverent at all to, in particular, a learning, learning, always – loved – to –
learn – more – than – he – already – knew, 12 – year – old AmTaham True – kiddo
nor to that adolescent’s true and correct knowledge of The Dead’s Bones in
Africa. No actual ancestoring knowledge himself
had that herr – teaching genre of ancestor – in – training! Obviously, this unholy, tutoring dude possessed,
as well, Herry Edinsmaier’s magical mantra of “Deny, Deny, Deny!” Just deny The Truth. That of The Dead’s Bones!

The event that was unfolding as The
Funeral of My Father began taking, at
this other town, a decidedly Mehitable – turn which, in some way, was to have
been expected. And in other, crucial and
honoring, ways … not! One of the many nieces
of Mehitable Natures True on her blood side of the Natures family, actually the
eldest of all of her nieces and
nephews from both ancestries, a person then also first cousin to me and to my
sibs, owns and operates by now for a very long, long time along with her spouse
a mortuary in this locality. All-we-all
had traveled there, of course, to select the accoutrements which these two
people would then manage in the next four to five upcoming days through the
physicality that was another funeral home building, and because of its distance,
… not theirs. Another one back in Williamsburg –– made by way of a business arrangement
apparently often done between two such establishments, especially when the
specific dead’s bones involved is –– or
was –– a relative of some or one of the funeral parlors’ proprietors.

However, nearly everything else about the ceremony from this visit on out
took on the characteristics of an affair which I did not recognize at all as a
True one. Only a year and a half earlier
this man, AmTaham True, had called a family meeting comprised of only us four
adult children of his –– and of no one else –– to exactly explain things inside The Willof the True Estate and to elaborate clearly to us direct
descendents of his about the terms AmTaham True had specifically set forth –– in
witnessed writing –– regarding his dying and death –––– one biiiig, big one
of which understood terms was to be … cremation! All four of us were present at Said
Meeting! Well, any of that family
meeting’s directives? I mean any
of AmTaham’s particularly detailed wants?
So certainly were not now happening!
And did not. No,
Mehitable turned the entire deal all upside down and around Her Way –– that is,
“in The Right Way” … as I, when a little kiddo, used to continuously hear pitched
at me if I fucked up stuff, according to her, which I’d been assigned to do.

The first of a couple of horrid liturgically dirge – worthy details
which Mehitable orchestrated was the casket selection. This lamentation deal commenced with an
actual parade led by the Natures niece as majorette – mortician, sans her
metallic baton of course but poised pen in hand instead, out of her parlor’s
backdoor to an outbuilding wherein were contained temperature and moisture
controls and about a dozen different full – sized and wee kiddo – measured models
in which one, now dead, could sail away off to Never – Never – Evermore land. I saw in this structure not one urn nor jar
appropriate to the holding of the ashes of anything carbonaceous after its
first being burnt beyond crisped or crypt or cryptic belief. Not even a box which was a construct slapped
together out of cheap pine board slabs such as had been the environs of my dear
friend Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s catacomb.
Silver or pewter – like, several different brown ones, black but gilded
with that tacky gold paint trim, white and child – sized. Mehitable’s, er, ah, um, rather AmTaham’s, choice
came in brown and ‘naturally’ was quite
appropriately padded with that pillowy, velvety smocked stuffing of satin or
some such other fabric. In off –
white. Oyster shell, likely.

Once in it, Daddy did look lovely, of course –– but for the
expression on his lips and in those “peaceful” eyelids of his that otherwise
pronounced in solitude to no one there willing
to or capable of Truely hearing him –– except me! “This is so not what I’d wanted nor stated. But, fudge, what do I bloody care now? I’m free –– free at last! She’s always had Her Way about anything and everything
anyhow!” Shit, the casket wasn’t even
pine, at the least, and was entirely of a metal composition including
appropriate railing handles for gripping use by pallbearers –– about whom … “I
have no idea.” Dark, dark blue – black
suit coat, pure white shirt, and some necktie about which I –– still –– also remember nothing –– except
that he had been the man to teach me how
to tie and to knot one once, my standing behind him and reaching around
from the rear his shoulders still massive although weakened by that polio
thingy … to secure it. “Because you have
sons now, Kitty, and will need sometime to know how to teach them to do this,” Daddy’d
coached me, the Truemaier Boys’ ma, on the Four – in – Hand first, then the
Half Windsor; and finally I graduated with the Double. This little life lesson, too, for a mother of
sons AmTaham had guided me in learning –– and I was long then into my 30s, his obviously full – well knowing even at
that point about Herry – Daddee’s type of role – modeling … teachings.

O and the second detail, the actual structuring of Daddy’s
memorial service itself: from the music
pieces right on down to which program cover to choose! Ardys the Eldest, probably the most male –
identified female adult I have ever met and fully proud of it, a woman who took
straight to heart and learned very, very well Mehitable’s lessons on servility
and deference to all men and so self
– defined even more than Herry’s Next
– Cunt McLive or Childless – ‘Evaluator’ Canard or indeed Mehitable herself,
settled on one along with our mother too, I am guessing, that outdid even their
own usual dependencies. Plain white, the
front cover had on it a wooden cross with its bottom pole’s post piercing
through a king’s three – pronged crown in black ink, the holy trinity symbol I
am supposing, through which also lay on top of the cross a palm branch also in
black. Not so appropriate for moral
atheist AmTaham True my thought was; but, hey, ‘twas only my thought and I now bothered not at all to verbalize it, the cover
itself being one – fourth of the entire, 8½” x 11”, folded deal to begin with
and printed on mighty thin paper! About
that part AmTaham would’ve been pleased –– that is, about his kiddos’ not
having spent for expensive cardstock or something fancier. Everything about this man his entire lifetime like so many, many of
the Midwest’s farmers before him

oozed frugality, minimalism, simplicity –––– and that had been the utter substance of AmTaham
True’s continuing message for us four at that family meeting, the distinct
elements of said meeting Ardys, Sterling and The Widow Mehitable were almost as
utterly ignoring –––– full – tilt funeral
boogie –––– right now!

It got worse … way
worse in point of fact.

In the lower right of this program
cover were the following words –– still from these three’s most magically made
and such ‘godly’ writings, most certainly not of AmTaham’s! “Be faithful unto death, and I will give you
a crown of life” had been lifted out of a place called revelations in some male
– construct’s worth of papers which martin luther alongside centuries of other only
– authoring men dominatingly termed ‘holy’ and which words, therefore because these several dudes “had said so,”
are to be believed and heeded! Opening
the program to page four and past a stinging passage on its page two about “Who
knows the power of your anger? For your
wrath is as great as the fear that is due you” said to have been taken from an
entity entitled psalms 90, to a back – and – forth group – recitation between
the preacherman and us, the mourning masses and the allegedly ‘AmTaham True – honoring’
assembled, there appeared this untruth,
a wholly hypocritical and speciously incorrect falsity that started off this “responsive
reading” … beginning, of course, with the ministerman’s first getting to speak,
“As it was confessed by AmTaham at his confirmation and at other times
throughout his christian life as a public testimony of his christian faith, we
join in making our faith known …” … and then the rest of us, along with this
cleric in his costly long white dress, were to launch into babbling away at
another deal full – up of more only – men’s words called the apostles’ credo … or
some such thingy.

“Confessed?
Public? Throughout? Faith?
christian faith?”

I should have … looooong and loudly … screamed back as myentitled!
“responsive reading,” “We all here so assembled today … know … that AmTaham True had been forcibly coerced as a 12 – year –
old, very publicly bludgeoned even! And
that this man, when he lived and breathed and upon this World walked, entirely loathed
any semblance of this whole, particularly mother
– fucking, public confessional – type shit that, since the time from when he
was just a budding teenager, he bloody well bloomin’ didn’t at all believe in! Religious education is child abuse, is child
abuse, is child abuse. Child abuse is
religious education. Very!”

As if this gobbledygook and the
claptrap that was the exhibit of AmTaham True inside his corpse and still not put to us per his wishes as
the heap of carbonaceous ashes which Daddy had really wanted to become weren’t
enough, Ardys, Mehitable and Sterling then topped the whole of it all off with
a couple of tunes which they called hymns:
“rock of ages” and “jesus, savior, pilot me.” These two, androcentric ditties were to be
sung by all of us before and after this guy in his floor – length, cloud – robe
throttled by such the fancy, multi – colored and likewise – expensive chokehold
of a braided stole allowed ( … of course!)
himself to sermonize on and on using some stock – and – canned, surreally metaphoric
funereal message said ministerman
termed, “following the shepherd’s voice” taken from yet another man’s myths,
one by the ubiquitous name of john written within yet another male – identified
construct claiming itself to be the be – all, end – all, tallest tale

of all traditions: the christian gospel.

The whole deal of this funeral
deed then was to be done with by a concluding number … just before the
recessional … rather levelly headed up as “abide with me, fast falls the eventide.” Then all of us assembled crawled off in
carbon – spewing cavalcade (… instead of with carbonaceous Mr. True) to the
side of his gravesite, the lone bugler’s Taps,
more words of such untruths about
Daddy blathered all around out there, then my father’s actual lowering –– and
my actual being brought down soooo, so low too I thought –– then, as well, the
dirt of course symbolizing Daddy’s ‘true’ True ashes, the cut, quite carbonaceous
flowers, more symbolism strewn down on top of that soil’s first, the church –
ladies’ swell – tasting food and, well, … back to all the rest of us then
living all of our separate lives … lovingly, … I guessed! NOT!

Wednesday the Truemaier Boys, just the three of them
unaccompanied by anybody else whom they knew and about which I was so glad,
flew themselves in to the Eastern Iowa Airport outside of Cedar Rapids to its
south, and that for us four was no
April Fool’s joke! I had not seen two of
my sons, Mirzah and Zane, since Monday night, 28 October 1991 … of the Elitist and
Erudite Edinsmaier’s and Flunks’ mother
– and kiddos’ – fucking fiasco! And, of
course, Jesse and I had not seen each other since the Friday night before that one,
the threateningly portentous blackness within our Ol’ Black of “If I’m taken
away to live in another state,

I know I won’t ever be a kid again in Iowa, Mom. I won’t ever again come back to Iowa as a
child; I just know it” sorrow!
Subsequently, I, Invisible Ma, “had not been allowed” to even talk to
any one of my three Boys since then …
either. “MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS! SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER!”

Shit, we had a helluva lot of
catching up to do –– and with such the gargantuan Grandpa AmTaham loss and no
privacy at all, it was, well, … not to be, of course! What did I and our needs matter after all?

This funeral ‘fun’? This was entirely The Widow Mehitable’s
ShowTime and not for us to desire anything whatsoever to suit ourselves: I couldn’t even go along to the airport
to pick them up! That task was relegated and delegated
not to the Truemaier Boys’ own mother at all but to their Uncle Sterling, a
patriarchal duty from which the brother absolutely delighted in deposing me ––
wearing with its directive … such the
very same snide – like sneer as Herry’s!
And aaaall about which Charlotte Perkins Gilman would have so, so easily
recognized, too: The mother’s chattel –
children, as of course is her own person, her actual self, are only to be … manhandled! Thusly, so ‘handled’ then from
one man only … over to becoming the property, voila! of only another man’s
–– and most assuredly for certain! never, never are the kiddos
to be delivered into the overall care of … only their very own mama! “How androcentrically managed and ‘balanced’, Ms. Gilman, not?” I was left thinking. She can do the chores of and for the children
as well as for him –– whoever the him is
at the time who happens to have the exalted spermatozoal DNA – possession
rights to her children,
that is, she can do the cooking, the serving, the cleaning up after, the
worrying about. She, the slave however,
just cannot have any rights at all to her own children. All of the perfectly papal personae and that
renegade one, marty luther? Why, any of these so godly men’d have been so
through – and – through … so thoroughly … pleased with their two descendent
pupils, the quite Male – Identified Mehitable and Her Most Excellent Only Male – Offspring Sterling!

It was spectacular, of course, just to see them all –– even if for such the so awfully
sorrowful deal as was this specific week’s.
Yes, they appeared to me so much taller and older! Hell, it’d been over five months’ time! Girls and boys their ages have spurts! Zane was particularly quiet and subdued, not
at all his usually exuberant self. I
mean, sure, one of his, and mine, too, most favored people in the whole world
died; but Zane had always … before … possessed
a special resiliency about bad stuff in life not witnessed in most folks of all
ages –– as had been the case with so many rescued animals particularly … including
his Sylvan laprine inside the Brookside Forest, a blesséd buoyancy after being
booted life’s hardballs –– of which Zane did not display any during this entire visit.
Things surrounding either AmTaham’s dying or everything back in West
Virginia or generally overall were entirely far, far too weighty –– even for Zane, still only 15 years old and in the
very midst of his teenage years. Earlier,
there had been talk of Zane’s tooting for AmTaham the Taps on his trumpet which I had brought with me from Ames
exactly because of that possible plan. One
lovely lone oak tree, already with this year’s Vernal Equinox and late, late
March nearly leafed out and so tall, had been singled out down a hillock a
short piece from Daddy’s soon – to – be grave where out from under it the solo
bugler was to sound that final farewell.
That tooter did not turn out to be Zane … after all.

For me the next three days passed by as pleasantly and as
warmly as the sudden, wholly unexpected death of one’s belovéd father possibly
could. From the comforting of the
presence and embracing arms of my equally belovéd Boys to the words and gazes
from my own four nephews and extraordinary first cousins of whom I am so
luckily blessed with several superb and stupendous individuals on both the
Natures and True sides of the family to the amazing miracles whom I have for
friends.

This man had a host of admirers and inspired friends
himself. The viewing and reception at
the Burg funeral home I found to be the
hardest for me coming as it did on the very evening of the afternoon when the
Boys had flown in … Wednesday. After the
first day, the hardhearted and meanspirited death – filled day of Monday not
only of AmTaham’s attack and dying but also their day of making Legion True out
to be “the evil, murdering monster that we, Sterling and Mehitable, know her so
to be –– just like Herry also says she
is!” and the next day of preparations and planning were over, I exhaled and let
my hair hang down and then, because of it, felt as did the Boys as well, fairly
shocky –– something a normal DEhuman
should expect to.

The humble church of AmTaham’s youth was packed, the women
of the kitchen, and the folks in there were
only females of course, the food and their serving of it up all proved delicious
and sensational and the graveside ceremonies … so sadlybreathtaking. Returning to Mehitable’s house, the Boys and
I determined to stay in its far recesses –– as the same deal as when The Widow
had bluntly ordered me to its very remote bedrooms as a 23 – year – old
divorcée back from New York City to hide out isolated there and to mask my
adult self away from local visitors and guests at her and AmTaham’s front
door. Mehitable True had done this very same
concealing of an entirely adult but psychotropic drug – taking Endys, too,
always couching her all – consuming embarrassment of my bipolar – labeled
sister and me and our apparent humiliation of her in her hometown community as …
“for our protection.” With a full
bathroom in the back as well, we four talked, we read, we talked some more
coming out from our retreat to the well – lit living room with its picture
window spance to the south only once in awhile … to specifically visit there
with relatives and friends. The Boys
enjoyed especially the company of their True cousins, my four nephews, these
seven male humans total then who equaled the entire extent of all of AmTaham’s
and Mehitable’s grandchildren. About the fact of their only – maleness,
Mehitable, herself merely birthing but a lone one male out of four total kiddos
altogether, continues to this day to repeat her colossal pride.

Time, as it does not always do for me at all, passed by us
four … entirely too swiftly: it was
Sunday morning of the 05th day of April, and my daddy AmTaham had
been in the ground and cold now … since Thursday afternoon. Mirzah’s, Zane’s and Jesse’s flight was set
to leave at approximately 1:30 p.m. that afternoon –– first for Kansas City, transferring them there
then to Pittsburgh and at last by way of yet another transfer on through to the
small, regional Montclank – Grubtrop airport inside central West Virginia … and
once there, thus, back into Herry – Daddee’s (alleged) handling before it grew
too, too dark … I was thinking. The Natures’
70 – something stunning and marvelous matriarch, Pearl, of my First Cousins Amanda,
Carolina and Wyman and for all of her time an aunt to awe any niece, asked to
drive the Truemaier Boys … with me finally included … and, of course, along
with The Widow Mehitable herself to their plane’s departure. She would, she said if Mehitable wanted it
that way, chauffeur us all there in AmTaham’s newest and wowing Caddy Blue, now
only about nine total days out from its purchase and into the Trues’ actual
ownership and unmistakably only (legally
blind) Mehitable’s … henceforth. This
offer of my Aunt Pearl’s Mehitable speedily agreed to. And since according to family law judges and to
the Truemaier Boys’ other owning – men like Herry and Sterling, it simply had
to be, then so gladly did … I too agree.

What it soooo did not
simply have to be, however –– was that
exact day!

Around about 10:30 in that a.m., Zane, never really this
entire time so far the effervescent and ebullient Zane whom I could recognize,
fell very nauseous and dizzy, diaphoretic, vertiginously woozy and took to
becoming nearly immediately prostrate on his belly in the bedroom closest to
the living room and kitchen.

I summoned pots to puke forth in, cooled water in which to
wet washcloths for forehead mopping and daubing –– and his Grandmother Mehitable,
“Call Herry, either you or Sterling. Get
him on the phone and tell him to reschedule the flight. Zane cannot go anywhere today. Here’re the telephone numbers, both for the
residence and for Herry’s lab at the med center. Go!
Call him, please! Now!”

“I’ll do no such thing!!!” was my immediately screamed, I mean stat! answer back. Now that,
indeed! was something I did recognize! Right up there alongside her “in The Right
Way!,” “I shall do no such thing!” is Mehitable’s standard response directly to me to just about anything and
everything I have ever asked of her … throughout my entire lifetime and so it
was certainly seeming to continue to be that
right about then, too!

The Widow’s manner was dictatorial and tyrannical as if she,
her very self, had been the parental rights’ – terminating praetor on that earlier
Storm County judicial bench. As a matter
of fact, it was pretty obvious that she was very well calculating right on that
spot there of Zane’s sickbed, at his and his brothers’ expense
of their physical health, psyches and well – being, the possible weight and
cost specifically to her … of my
venture at flights’ rescheduling. What
would be Herry’s take on her, Mehitable, the maternal grandmother’s siding back
here in Iowa with the Truemaier Boys’ mama (who also just happened to be her
very own child) … versus … placing
them all on the previously arranged airplane right then and there –– with a traveling Truemaier child so ill! and
all –– back to their daddee’s? So very,
very soon into the Loss of their Grandpa AmTaham not only from her but from the
rest of us as well, she was, in mighty fine – tuned and operating aprovechar style, already in to figuring
out what the likelihood would be of The (Ex – ) Son – in – Law Herry Edinsmaier’s
interpreting her actions at attending to the true “best interests of the Truemaier Boys” if she gave up, for even just this one day, her intentions and efforts at remaining Herry
– Daddee’s most staunchest of allying, male – identified henchwomen. If in her immediate future alongside, of
course, STEP – Right – In – “Mom” – McLive, ... if Mehitable did not
abrogate the wishes of the Boys’ actual mother and, now, diagnostician, nurse, doctor and healer as well, and if she
did not collude –– and right now! –– with
The Good and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee Herry and go up against the involvement
in their futures by the Truemaier Boys’ actual mama and instantly and directly
work to make her as invisible to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane … as Daddee and stepMommy do, why then what ‘privileges’ as The
Takeover Mother – Surrogate inside these brothers’ lives would Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier rescind from her, Mehitable?!
“I. Will. Do. No. Such. Thing!”

“Please, Mom. Look at
him. He can’t go anywhere today. Not like this. Please, please call Herry. Even Herry won’t want him to come back in
this condition, I’m sure of it,” although I was nowhere at all sure of my
statement. In fact, I felt it a lie ––––
but I had to try. Zane was sooo, so sick.

“Yes, he can. And he
will. For all you know, he’s faking it!”
she honestly said that. Mehitable,
Zane’s grandma … allegedly in the agony and throes of gravest grief over the dying
of her own great husband … she actually said that. She did.

And he did. Zane did
fly, too. That very day.

No schedule of Herry – Daddee’s or Mehitable’s making was
about to be by me upset or
disrupted. Uh – uh.

Up Mehitable got him; and since Zane really hadn’t thrown up
yet but could barely navigate against the spinning sensation, it mattered not
at all how he or I felt and only that she not be perceived in Herry’s eyes as
anyone weakened or possibly influenced by the moaning cries and pleadings of
the child’s mother. With Pearl indeed
driving and as vociferous to Mehitable as a disapproving, incredulous and
outright angry sister – in – law could have been, the car ride to the Eastern
Iowa Airport did nothing to assuage Mehitable’s immoral resolve
nor, of course, calm Zane’s stomach, heartbeats and heartbreak either; and
after the most horrendous and wrenching of goodbyes again that likes of which
we all had only just experienced the previous October, why … Patriarchal
Pappy’s will and Mehitable’s fears of that will of Herry’s prevailed. And essentially, that afternoon, tossed Zane
and his two younger brothers onto the first of three airplanes!

They,
the airplanes, all three of them, pitched and heaved –– as did Zane … “all the
way home, Ma” through three flights and two transfers and … two very
frightened, littler brothers and one very, very sick, weakened, scared, scarred
and selfishly bartered son of mine. Abused, violently violated and
royally fucked Zane was a thing traded between a father and a grandmother … and
about which inane act perped by this child’s supposed loved ones, done by these
two ‘adults,’ his own mama as powerless as ever before … could do absolutely
nothing. Again.

With
that grandmother beginning to secure for herself more and more her most
wanted role of The Hostile – Takeover Mother in The Opera, my Aunt Pearl motored
her and me, completely mute and burning for keeps into my memory this specific
Sunday, 05 April 1992 airport scenario just played out, back to the Burg where
after thanking Ms. Pearl Natures for all of her kindnesses shown to us four, I
immediately packed up everything I most wanted forever and
ever to save –– whichI knew right thenwould be all,
would bethe entire extent of anything that I from my daddyvia
this particular male – identified womancould ever possibly inherit
–– and myself departed, for the very last time,
this house that was no home. It had been no home ever, even with AmTaham
alive and within it –– because of Mehitable; and I determined on the roadtrip
back to the refuge that was my workstation the next morning at the Forestry Department
that I would never darken its doorstep again. Which I have not.

In
addition to Daddy’s dying and to Mehitable’s dwelling now that had never been
for me any true haven at all, I began to finally be able to willfully and to
wholly let go of two others in my life because of the pain which they brought
to me instead of the pleasure from them there in it that I should have been
experiencing. At earlier times in my dealings with her as my sibling, I
felt that perhaps my eldest sister was, with others in her life east of me and
awash in her fanatic, frenetic religiosity, … rather harmless. I thought
that if I could just ignore it, … it –– what crazy – making Ardys’s involvement
in all matters magical and superstitious and mythological and blinding truly
meant and what she really was, an extremist, to the extent that it ruled
her every word and act –– was of no real damage to me or destruction to anyone
else.

Now,
however? Now … I believed entirely differently.

Sister
Ardys’s was the pernicious goading from just beneath skin surfaces where her needling
spur chiseled around and prodded and incited inflammation with subsequent
fulminating infection and infestation all around under there. And all of this
destruction, of course, under the hypocritical pretense of her actions being
those of goodness and light and mercy and grace and a host of other of those
spiritually divine, I’m – such – a – big – person nouns which, in Truth and in
Nature, actually promote generalized dissension and internal dehiscence and
thus, which is of course her niggling intent and desired outcome in the first
place! … thus most especially, … inside a
family!

While Ardys prized her servility ability, another attribute
of some secretariats which this woman most surely did not possess nor had at
all the aspiration to own either, a very good one actually, is the art of
keeping secrets when they soooo need keeping.
Which, in my book, is all of them –– that,
indeed, being the essential
ingredient in whether or not some piece of information is defined as a
‘secret’! Inside our family? Noooo, no
secretary she –– if that meant, in any capacity, being a true confidant and
secret – arying. As a matter of fact,
all Mehitable or Sterling needed to do in order to know something was to sic soooo
male – identified Ardys on its trail. And
if it were information that she could obtain, why then it was information which
they too, in short order, would also possess.

I couldn’t have any of that.
Not in my life now and, most certainly, not any longer. Not with The Opera and The ‘Courts’ and The
Exalted Herry – Daddee already ruling me with his various filliping, follying folies
as he did. With AmTaham’s apologizing in the Havencourt condominium
basement over our soaking those couple of paintbrushes and his and my long –,
long – due conversation there utterly releasing me from anything lutheran or
christian and his granting his kiddo … me … entire
freedom from religion in general altogether, I had been suddenly made not
only more enlightened in a roundabout sort of way on the immense and daily dangers
of Ardys, of people like her, but also completely liberated from ever, ever
having to react any longer to her as if her extremism was okay and good and a
thing that I myself should strive to embrace when it definitely so was –– not!
Even though Ardys, all of the times I was ever in her presence, either
ostensibly or subtly from behind the scenes’ curtains, forced or foisted her
religiosity onto me … that aggravating jabbing with its egging – on, under –
the – skin kind of invading plague.

My brother’s arrogant demeanor, Sterling’s deportment of
entitlement in and total control over every aspect of his hauntings so similar
to the upscale haughtiness of Herry’s and Mehitable’s, that is, wherever Sterling
roamed, I wanted no more of that either.
He and I had been so, so tight as little eight – and ten – year – olds
but that? That we were not … now.

Now, I believed I had no sister
– brother relationship; and while ours had begun to deteriorate my freshman
year in college when I in 1966 and 1967, took to pacific bra – burning and he
took to including all – out militarism into his daily comings and goings that
eventually led him to drop bombs, napalm and agent orange on nameless, faceless
people because of “just following orders,” Sterling hadn’t started out to be
that which he now came before me as. Nor
had AmTaham at all endorsed the type
of individual man Sterling presented himself as –– altogether too recognizable
to me as just another aggressive narcissist, just another Herod Edinsmaier. Just another “because he can” kind of
guy. And
as well, in absolutely no way at all … brotherly.

A true friend to me Mehitable
was never going to become; and in these two others of her gene pool, Ardys and
Sterling, I obviously also could not realize supporters either. Sterling because of his resemblance to all
things Herry and Mehitable, and the treatment which Ardys dished out under her never
– so – holy and quite – galling guise of invoking divinity and love often reminds me of an experience I’d once
had as a newly beginning veterinary student.
The three months’ worth of summertime before I commenced the very first academic
year of veterinary class work and with my possessing humans’ medical and nursing
knowledge, skill and its actual registration thereof, why, I had been taken onto
the payroll of the College’s Small Animal Clinic as its only combination
central sterile supply employee and operating – theater nurse. In the midst of a most humid August afternoon,
Emergency Receiving took in on a stretcher an entirely prostrate and moribund Old
English sheepdog … barely breathing, about 80 pounds’ worth.

This dog was not unconscious but so critically dehydrated
and in extreme pain that it just no longer could stand, let alone, walk itself
into our care. The pooch ultimately became
the property of the Small Animal Clinic and a successful ‘experiment’ of that
year’s collection of rotating senior clinical veterinary students since the
canine was not discharged until the following March! Cured.
Its owners had not been able to withstand the medical bills which nearly
immediately piled up, not to mention, those that were sustained chronically … although
the Clinic eventually did release the animal back to them anyhow.

On scorching, sticky Iowa days after a cat’s or dog’s
scratch wound merely the size of a pinprick, it takes no time at all for
barnfly eggs laid by those insects attracted to itty – bitty serum droplets wetting
the fur strands by only a miniscule amount … to hatch. And the subsequent maggots therefrom … to
begin their infesting burrowing and tunneling demolition –––– obliterating
under the dermis, epidermis and all of this hound’s foot – long hair the entire
fascial and fibrinous infrastructure of a nearly five – foot – long animal’s
chest, thoracic and abdominal walls … bilaterally.

Once its fur was completely shaved off, anyone would have
had a very difficult time gazing upon this heap were it to have been a corpse
or even a mutilated, rotting, stinking carcass out in an August’s pasture or field
somewhere, but it was made all the more grievous to look upon this critter
knowing that it was –– alive. Hours and
hours and hours and hours the seniors and I labored over this individual dog
for at least the first month that it was with us, and the ensuing ones that it
took for the entire sides of this animal to literally … regrow. The canine had to regenerate a new, complete
covering of skin in from its most outer edges and from its shoulders to its
haunches in toto … bilaterally. And as
critically at the very same time along this long, long way … try to keep
from its becoming infected, Pseudomonasaeruginosa the most egregious and
damning of microbes. The condition
visited one summer in Iowa’s farm country upon this downed creature paralleled
the fifth – degree burns into muscle and bone of persons –– anywhere for any
reason –– splashed with … napalm.

I believed then, and do so today, that the workings and the behaviors
of my sister, Ardys, in her interactions

with virtually all others of my
acquaintance and most especially with me and my woundings whether minute or
wide, to be not so different at all from those of jet fighter pilots in Viet
Nam who similarly visited such fuckful conditions upon living things and to
mirror the machinations of those maggots with, intentionally if not also effectively
in at least some of us other recipients of Ardys’s plotting attentions, … matching
consequences.

One classic example of such an
undermining – and – sabotage working of Sister Ardys involved a neatly
typewritten letter which I received from her, single – spaced, one 8 x 11½
piece of white paper on both sides and dated the Fourth of July 1992, a weekend
that year, a freeing Saturday no less!
Not only some folks’ idea of marking a day of “independence” –– even in
three women their whole lives so very well – trained by their male – identified
mother, Mehitable, to simply be soft, deferent and subservient, that is servile
to men –– but also this holiday was only a smidgen over Daddy’s lying in the
ground for a mere three months’ time by then.

The full front side of this sheet was sisterly letter
chitter – chatter: gardens, visits, her
volunteer activities, some on her adult sons off on summer – job jaunts and
away from their respective undergraduate programs, the Michigan weather, even
up to something about how Ardys is “glad Sterling has been able to spend a few
weekends with her. Many other townpeople [her word] and friends have seen to it
that she has transportation and companionship.
I feel rather helpless at times, but try to call and checkup [Ardys’s word]
on her every few days. I think it makes
us both feel better and we get to share things, ideas and newsy stuff Mother
enjoys.”

Then, over on this missive’s backside Elder – Sister Ardys
launches the napalm – containing missiles above the bow and her similarly
outfitted torpedoes under it!

“Now that I have caught you up on such things that have
occurred in the past month, Mother tells me you have not called, written,
visited…….NOTHING SINCE DAD DIED. How
unthoughtful, selfish, self-centered, cold, uncaring, unChristian, [her
capitalization], uncivil can YOU BE???????????????????”

[I had to stop here and count
them all by hand to be accurate –– that is, the 19 of Ardys’s questioning
marks.]

“Shame on you for being so small and so selfish. Mother really wants you to be her daughter,
her friend. You have called her a
‘witch’ to me. I almost responded that
night that I thought the broomstick belonged in your hand. But, Sterling intervened, and I didn’t get to
say it. Consider it said. Only it isn’t a witch you are like, it is
something much worse. You are causing
unhappiness and distress to Mother. She
does NOT DESERVE SUCH BEHAVIOR FROM YOU!
There is a God-given law which reads, (incase [Ardys’s word] you have
forgotten it) “Respect your father and your mother, so that you may live a long
time…” [Notice how Ardys takes care to
type the man, even though this particular one is dead, before the living woman about whom she is writing to me –– just as
is smack in line with the patriarchal androcentrism of the biblical encyclic
with which marty luther has so well inculcated her.] Be very careful, Legion. That is the ONLY commandment that carries
both a promise and a veiled threat from a holy, just, mighty, care-full
God. You have some choices and
considerations to make about your behavior toward Mother. I hope you will make the right ones that will
be of benefit to both Mother and to yourself.
I will be asking Mother how things are going from time to time. If I know you are not changing and trying to
become all that you could be with regard to being a daughter and friend, you
will be hearing from me again. (Perhaps
you would like to know, God’s commandments are recorded in Exodus
20:1-17.)

When you send that next repayment check … ”

[Here Ardys refers to that which is absolutely none of her
mother – fucking business. Soooo,
apparently, Mehitable must have told her, and likely Brother Sterling as well, of
my financial dealings with her and Daddy because
I certainly had not –––– and about which these two parents had never one
time said to me a thing regarding Ardys’s or Sterling’s borrowing from them biiiig,
big loans from time to time! Mehitable
obviously blabbed to Ardys that I, indeed, had in April 1991, borrowed
$2,323.00 at 8 percent interest and complete with notarized promissory note all quite proper and
legal – like from her and Daddy to pay off, then, my subsequent income taxation
penalties which I’d incurred against
me for my cashing in too early all of
my IRAs the year before –– in order to live!
And I was in its repayment stages –– always, these, in full and current ––
when Daddy dropped, all installment monies “of not less than $72.79 per month
due on or before the 15th” now … routinely
and regularly … being mailed by me to The Widow Mehitable … alone! Obviously then? Mehitable hadn’t been so truthful to my
sister in regard to that part in Ardys’s letter which recounts that, “Mother
tells me you have not called, written, visited…….NOTHING SINCE DAD DIED.”]

“Not one hour and not one dollar,” once I asked the
Righteous Ancestor AmTaham when he was still One – In – The – Making what, for
a death, he would consider okay. At
least just an okay one, if not a mighty fine death. It was not until a couple of years out from
his burial or even longer –– after a degree of time had passed me by so that
the suddenness and the shock of it all had somewhat lessened in its intensity
that I was able to look back at the chronology of this entire affair, of AmTaham
True’s falling down stone – cold dead on an early Monday morning after enjoying
his usual self – entertainment of some reading and while preparing to go to
full – time work at a task he didn’t too much mind doing while, at the very
same time, undergoing no effects from slowly deteriorating ill health, no
severe or chronic physical pain nor enduring any diagnoses of bodily conditions
to later worsen or prove catastrophic, all in the accompaniment and proximity
of someone also fairly healthy whom he loved –– although not with him the
presence of his adored Truemaier grandsons, as … exactly the way I would like to someday die. Just not as young as Daddy was when last he breathed. And not without my children, all quite living
and healthy themselves of course, beside me, too.

AmTaham True had only one fear about which I as his kiddo
knew. That is to say, he surely had more
than one. Hell, he was a soldier in
World War II for chris’sake, his own spouse nearly died on him a number of
times, Child Sterling was pitched unconscious off of a pony once and not found
for more than an hour’s time and his own daddy, the Truemaier Boys’ Great –
Grandpa Zebulon, did die a lingering death from a thrown embolic thrombus to
the heart after a colossal beam in a lumberyard fell upon him pinning his legs
which so compromised the man’s lower – extremity vascularity that it and he
never truly recovered from the accident.
So AmTaham, like all of us, had plenty of reasons to fear some
things.

It’s just that I only ever knew of this one: AmTaham did not want to spend any time at
all, not even one hour, as a resident of a nursing home or old folks’
facility. And he did not. He got his wish on that one.

O, how he absolutely loathed the thought of –– and truly
outright feared –– having to spend any time as a “patient” or resident in such
an establishment … anywhere. I’m sure
that there are such places which are good ones; Daddy wasn’t so sure. Ever.
And AmTaham True never wanted to set foot in one as a person having to
actually stay and live there. Well, … he
didn’t. “Not one hour.”

Except for the one aspirin and the one tablet of cardiac
medicine which AmTaham True took daily that, of the latter pill itself alone,
actually was probably as costly as a dollar or more … given the outrageous
expense of prescription medications even then … Daddy, ever the economist and
frugal to his core, abhorred the cost of health care and especially that which
could be classified as catastrophic and lavishly spent on elderly people. From his research and reading AmTaham told me
on more than one occasion that, in the United States, the most money spent to
provide a person medical attention is, indeed, lain out in the average adult American’s
last five days of life. Not including
children then, the common woman or man in need of medical care is never more in
need of it apparently, according to demographics and economics studies, than
that which is administered to the person during the five, consecutive days just
prior to her or his death. On
average. As in workers trying to dramatically
bring the person back. After stroke or
heart attack or cancerous metastases or end – stage kidney failure or massive
visceral organ shutdown or disseminated intravascular coagulation or brain
function cessation due to whatever cause.
Trying to bring the patient back … from the precipice of purgatorial
entry!

And except for the cost of those
two pills taken once a day for the five days leading up to Monday, 30 March
1992 then, “not one dollar” of billing for physicians’ services nor
hospitalization nor any other manner of fanatic – extremist medical care was
put out for nor onto AmTaham True’s family and estate … towards trying to save this
particular mahatma from said cataclysmic illness. It was that which AmTaham loathed –– what he believed
was the squandering of resources out of that which should go to the rest of the
family members and out of that which should be his legacy and their estate
which he so did not wish frittered away upon himself. And that, too, did not happen to
AmTaham. For which, if Daddy had known,
I believe he would have been so thankful.

* *
* *

Only exactly one month after Daddy’s dying, the date of 30
April 1992, rings out as the next remarkable one. At ten minutes before 4 in the p.m., I found
myself bounding through the Brookside Forest to its entry lot wherein I could
park Ol’ Black all day for free and walk the 20 minutes up one of its asphalt and
cinder paths into my campus building.
Except that on this trip back to the car I was sprinting at the highest
speed that my skirt and flats would allow me.
If the trek had taken me the usual 1/3 of an hour to get back to my
vehicle, well, indeed, I would have been too late. And it would have all been over. ‘My case’ entirely and utterly closed. No going forward whatsoever. No further legal action allowed me. ‘The Court’s’ “rules” …

At 3:50 p.m. the incoming telephone call to my Forestry
workstation had been for me a personal message and not one departmentally
related, “Dr. True, this is Mrs. Ray.
I’m responding to a question you put in to the clerk’s office
yesterday. You’re aware, aren’t you,
that you need to have file – stamped over here at the courthouse in the clerk’s
office by 4:30 this afternoon the initial petition document? I can’t really advise you on anything more
than that since none of us here are attorneys.
We’re not really permitted to do that anyhow, ya’ know.”

I did know that last part –– hers about the not counseling
me in the fashion of a lawyer regarding legal matters since she and other
workers in their county governmental office were actually barred by law from
stating to me outright just about anything more than Ms. Ray had just
done. I had not known, however, about
the first part –– about the 4:30 p.m. file – stamping deadline in order to keep
hope, that most awful of addictions, alive.
Hence, the very reason I was running.
I had had the document prepared and appropriately notarized; I just
hadn’t known for certain the timeframe on filing the petition which was why my
inquiry into the clerk’s office of the day before. Nor the answer to its cut – off date with
which Ms. Ray had just now supplied to me.

Exiting said Forest I turned Ol’ Black toward 13th
–– and through the intersection connecting to the disgusting Othello Drive at
the very limits of, or more than, in – town speeds and out onto the interstate
a short piece till at its juncture I joined up with #30, a thoroughfare known
as the Lincoln Highway which, labeled as Federal Highway #30 throughout all
lengths of it, eventually traverses … the entire United States of America. On this particular nine – mile stretch of its
two lanes into the courthouse town, however, it is well – posted as 55 mph
through farming countryside and crossed by all manner of such slow – moving machinery,
road – working equipment and truck types.
Not to mention motorcycles and even bicycles.

Not to mention that this portion of Highway #30 is quite a
favorite and routine passageway into the furthest reaches of the rural region by
every single one of the Storm County sheriff’s deputies.

Timely this Thursday then that
for me Ol’ Black had always been such a barnburner of an automobile.

More than one time in this brief
nine miles that Chevy wagon and I were propelling easterly, pell – mell,

at upwards of 90 miles per hour
passed several wee cars and two 18 – wheeler semis. And, most fortuitously for me, zero deputy
dogs. Hope, indeed, is an affliction
that could have killed me –– and others –– that day.

At three minutes before 4:30, at
4:27 p.m., Thursday, 30 April 1992, and with grateful appreciation to the
kindest of Storm County folks present within its University’s Forestry
Department, particularly Ms. Rosalind Franklin and Dr. Joplin, and those
special others in law enforcement not
present at that precise half an hour upon its portion of the Lincoln Highway, I
owned in my right fist an officially file – stamped document. The petition stated that Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier, by way of his own willful and seditious choices, had caused to
occur such circumstances in my and the Truemaier Boys’ relationships with each
other as for those conditions to be material, destabilizing changes. Daddee’s choosing to subvert the Boys’ and my
ties and bonds were, indeed, changes away from what his promises had
been to Judge Sol Wacotler Seizor.
Which promises too then of course, upon my appealing the September 1990
trial court decision to the three, all – male panel of Iowa Court of Appeals
judges, Perjuring Herry had –– for his
easy convincement of all of these men –– merely
manufactured.

While the Boys and I had not
known of Daddee – Herry’s written statement, of his sworn affidavit, submitted to daJudge in January 1989, about
the
Good and Wonderful Doctor’s word back then that Zane, Jesse and Mirzah would … all
three … graduate from Ames High School! and obviously of his
assurance, even his guarantee, that they would stay in Ames, let alone in
Iowa, some 3¼ years
previously, none of that had really mattered at all to ‘the Court’ –– which did know. By this time Herod Edinsmaier’s ‘promise’ just about that one thing, not
to mention about sooo many others concerning the maintenance, promotion and
enhancement of relationships between my Boys and me to at least four different
judges through two separate trials and one appeal had in no way at all
obstructed nor impeded Dr. Edinsmaier from removing all of the Truemaier
Boys not only from Ames but also from Iowa.
“Nor stopped Herry in any way from extracting all three of them
entirely, Mehitable, that exact evil from which you should’ve soooo taught me
to protect myself, from out of my life and away from me, completely away from
and out of my life! Me, their
mother! You should’ve coached me on how
to protect myself and my children from this incredible wickedness, Mother
Mehitable!”

I need to note here, in
essence, that because the three
appellate judges represented the interpretation of the laws of the land of Iowa
and thus its public, that is, its people, both the humans and the DEhumans of
the State, then what the appellate judges, all of them men of course, were
saying too is that if they did not give a
good goddamn about the Good Doctor’s word, then why the hell shouldn’t all of those
Iowans who are the very people of these laws also fuck a mother, too?

These four men –– as all Iowans’ judicial representatives ––
merely stated to us, the public, that it was quite okay for us too to collude
with the pillared doc in whatever it was that Herry wanted to get away with
doing and … fuckingly gut the bitch.
Besides, these five men –– the four plus Daddee –– argued, rationalized
and justified to themselves that the good people of Iowa would never even know
of Edinsmaier’s “word” –– in the wholly unlikely event that any one of them
would have bothered to rise up and say something about his actually keeping his many promises! Smack in line the reasoning of these four patriarchs
is with, as well, their musingly and correctly figuring that … this pissant woman
Legion’s “passions and struggles are nowhere near as stupendously important to
anyone else as they, O – so head – bangingly, are … to her!”

And these four guys didn’t even care, because they didn’t want to and they didn’t have to, about all of the
other subversions of Herry’s –– his exhibitionism and voyeurism and frotteuristic
incest and bestiality … “cows, dogs, pigs and chickens” the Rolodex card states
in that order! which is scripted in Herry’s own hand, the woman – loathing
jokes, his crimes of providing and encouraging the sex toys of gem – studded
condoms and hormone – raging greeting cards and other pornographic magazines
and materials in front of, with and to the Boys, not to mention the King and
his Nottingham Sheriff’s folie à deux at preventing the Boys and me from having
the least little bit of contact with each other or permitting them to have even
$1’s worth of the $5,000.00 that were the gifts, the letters, the cards, postage
stamps, medicine, the books, the favored foods, toys, sports equipment, movie
tickets, the post office box use, the telephone calling cards, etc, etc, et
cetera that, with Jesse, Mirzah and Zane now five whole states away, I had sent
to them all! As Rachel had declared last
Winter Solstice, “And there’s no judge, Legion, who himself doesn’t surf porn.”

What is truly classic and thoroughly choice, though, is its
mother – fucking, sexist flipping
reversal:

No woman, no mother could have moved out of state in the
same wink of an overnight, heartbreaking beat that Thieving Edinsmaier had done
with my Truemaier Boys Tuesday, 29 October 1991. No woman, no mother I have ever, ever come
across in all of my literal trials’ and similar tribulations’ travels since … can
take the products of one’s exalted sperm –– even across the fuckin’ county’s line like, say, because she took
up another union or had secured for herself the coolest job ever –– the way that this man banished my children not
only from out of my sight and away from my arms but also all of me, their very
own mother, from completely out of their brains and spirits as well. Invisible. Deadened.
= Daddee’s defining purpose.

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About Me

! My thoughts are as free as wind o'er the ocean,
No one can see their form or their motion.
No hunter can find them, no trap ever bind them.
MY LIPS may be STILL, ... ... BUT ... I THINK WHAT I WILL ! ( as, and in the manner, of Alsatian pacifists, World War II )
! The whole body of SCIENCE is PROOF against all gods from all religions !
"The most important attribute for 'a real scientist' is: to actually .understand. some science." -- Dr Brian Cox